Canada allows the reader to a front and center with an intimate seat into his personal history with violence. Canada learned the code of the streets because he grew up in the streets and had to fight to protect himself and his friends. Now transformed, Canada provides the reader with insight into his work with youth and the programs that he has started to support youth. Geoffrey Canada is now the Executive Director and President of the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York. His book, Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America provides the reader with a “Tale of Two Cities” sentiment.
Geoffrey Canada was born in 1952, raised by a poor, single mom in the South Bronx. One of Canada’s first distinct memories is his brothers…show more content… The police asked questions and wrote down the answers, but clearly didn’t care, Canada writes: “This contact with the police shook my confidence in the world”. Canada was just bringing to light the controversial reality that the black male is a victim of his own society. My husband came to face this reality at 17 years old when he was arrested for standing outside of a local grocery store past Michigan curfew law for minors. Instead of being sent home, because he was a kid with no criminal record, he was arrested and sent to jail for Trespassing. While he spent the weekend in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, he realized that the justice system had little respect for him as a black male. He and Canada have a mutual understanding, because they are both victims of a flawed perception of the black male in America. Director of Fruitvale Station the story Ryan Coogler, describes the black male’s perception within America’s Justice System, “When you hear about them in the media, you hear about them doing horrible things. You never hear about a pit bull doing anything good in the media. And they have a stigma to them ... and, in many ways, pit bulls are like young African-American males. Whenever you see us in the news, it's for getting shot and killed or shooting and killing somebody -- for being a stereotype. And that's what you see for African-Americans in the media and the